Meaning
An instinctive, immediate sense that something is right or wrong - a judgment felt in the body rather than reasoned out, based on instinct and accumulated experience instead of conscious analysis of the facts. Neutral register, at home in business and journalism. It flags a judgment that lacks stated evidence, so pair it with facts when you need to persuade; overuse can read as excuse-making. Regional use: American English (origin); now General English.
Origin
The idea that the intestines house the emotions is ancient; Etymonline notes it and points to bowel, used figuratively for pity and compassion since the late fourteenth century. Guts has meant spirit or courage since 1893, and hate someone's guts dates to 1918, but the specific intuition cluster is mid-twentieth-century: Etymonline dates gut reaction to 1963, gut feeling by 1970, and gut check by 1976. Modern science gives the metaphor fresh resonance - the enteric nervous system, nicknamed the second brain, lines the gut and contains most of the body's serotonin and about half its dopamine - though Wikipedia cautions that microbiome-mood findings remain largely correlational, so the physiology backs the imagery, not literal intuition in the bowel. The variant gut instinct is equally common.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- go with your gut
- gut instinct
- gut reaction
Usage Examples
- Her gut feeling told her the contract was trouble, so she read every clause twice before signing it.
- I cannot explain it, but my gut instinct says we should decline the offer and wait for a better one.
- Detectives often act on a gut feeling that a witness is hiding something long before any evidence appears.